GROUND SQUIRREL CONTROL IN SOUTHWEST UTAH Mark Nelson USU - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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GROUND SQUIRREL CONTROL IN SOUTHWEST UTAH

Mark Nelson USU Extension Beaver County

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Research funded by WESTERN SARE

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Utah

Beaver County

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Beaver County

 Beaver County is a rural county with a population

• f 6500.

 Over 21,000 acres of alfalfa hay is raised in the county annually.  The majority of this high quality alfalfa is sold to the dairies in southern California.

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Townsend Ground Squirrel

 Is a small gray squirrel found in Nevada and Western Utah.  It eats alfalfa, grasses and other agronomic crops.  They breed in March and have litters of 8-10 babies in April.

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 Hundreds of acres of alfalfa ground in western Beaver County are currently infested.  The problem has increased substantially the last few years.

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The squirrels are costing farmers over $100,000 each year. They started out just infesting the fence lines but now are covering the whole fields.

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Current control programs were not taking care of the problem.

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 Once the alfalfa greens up it is hard to get the squirrels to eat the bait.  Shooting is fun but very time consuming.  Flooding and fumigating are effective but very time consuming

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For the past two years we have held a series of public meetings to educate land

• wners on the best way to

control the squirrels.

• Dr. Terry Mesmer, USU

Extension Wildlife Specialist, has helped us implement a new baiting program where we could get better control by applying a pre-bait and then a bait before the alfalfa greens up.

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 To determine the effectiveness of the prebaiting program we set up a trial where we compared the effects of no baiting, baiting, and prebaiting.

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 We selected 12 plots, 3 each in 4 different farmers

• fields. Each plot

was 150 ft X 150 ft and at least 1000 ft from each

• ther.

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Each treatment consisted

• f a plot that was

prebaited with oats and then baited with zinc phosphide, 1 plot baited with zinc phosphide without prebaiting 1 control plot that received no treatment.

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Squirrel Observations

 Each plot was

• bserved each day

for 3 days before any baiting took place  The plots were

• bserved for

another 3 days after the treatments were applied.

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 The prebait and bait was applied to the plots using a hand spreader.

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Farmers are able to use 4 wheelers to spread the bait quickly and effectively

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Beaver County treated all of the county right a ways

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Results of the ground squirrel control trial – 2009 & 2010

Before baiting After Baiting % Change Control 2009 2010 5.4 squirrels 6.3 3.6 squirrels 4.3 33% 32% 32.5 Bait Only 2009 2010 8.3 squirrels 6.3 3.4 squirrels 3.3 59% 52% 55.5 Prebait – Bait 09 2010 10.7 squirrels 6.9 2.7 squirrels 2.3 75% 66% 71%

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Follow up survey of farmers on the Milford Flat

 The farmers who returned surveys estimated that they spent over $17,000 controlling squirrels.  52% of the farmers tried the pre-baiting, baiting program.  The majority of the farmers feel like this new baiting program really lowered the number of squirrels this past year.

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Questions? Questions

Mark.nelson@usu.edu